comparison etc/NEWS @ 51982:f3d2ca716f2c

*** empty log message ***

51981:e363b422bcd4

`lazy-completion-table' must be used to initialize the value of VAR.

+++
** `minor-mode-list' now holds a list of minor mode commands.

** The new command `modify-all-frames-parameters' modifies parameters
for all (existing and future) frames.

+++
** `sit-for' can now be called with args (SECONDS &optional NODISP).

** New standard font-lock face `font-lock-preprocessor-face'.

+++
** The macro `with-syntax-table' does not copy the table any more.

** The variable `face-font-rescale-alist' specifies how much larger
(or smaller) font we should use.  For instance, if the value is
'((SOME-FONTNAME-PATTERN . 1.3)) and a face requests a font of 10
point, we actually use a font of 13 point if the font matches
SOME-FONTNAME-PATTERN.

** The function `number-sequence' returns a list of equally-separated
numbers.  For instance, (number-sequence 4 9) returns (4 5 6 7 8 9).
By default, the separation is 1, but you can specify a different separation
as the third argument.  (number-sequence 1.5 6 2) returns (1.5 3.5 5.5).

** `file-chase-links' now takes an optional second argument LIMIT which
specifies the maximum number of links to chase through.  If after that
many iterations the file name obtained is still a symbolic link,
`file-chase-links' returns it anyway.

** `set-fontset-font', `fontset-info', `fontset-font' now operate on
the default fontset if the argument NAME is nil..

** The escape sequence \s is now interpreted as a SPACE character,
unless it is followed by a `-' in a character constant (e.g. ?\s-A),
in which case it is still interpreted as the super modifier.
In strings, \s is always interpreted as a space.

** New function `set-process-filter-multibyte' sets the multibyteness
of a string given to a process's filter.

** New function `process-filter-multibyte-p' returns t if
a string given to a process's filter is multibyte.

** A filter function of a process is called with a multibyte string if
the filter's multibyteness is t.  That multibyteness is decided by the
value of `default-enable-multibyte-characters' when the process is
created and can be changed later by `set-process-filter-multibyte'.

** If a process's coding system is raw-text or no-conversion and its
buffer is multibyte, the output of the process is at first converted
to multibyte by `string-to-multibyte' then inserted in the buffer.
Previously, it was converted to multibyte by `string-as-multibyte',
which was not compatible with the behaviour of file reading.

** New function `string-to-multibyte' converts a unibyte string to a
multibyte string with the same individual character codes.

** New variables `gc-elapsed' and `gcs-done' provide extra information
on garbage collection.

** New function `decode-coding-inserted-region' decodes a region as if
it is read from a file without decoding.

** New function `langinfo' accesses locale information.

** `save-selected-window' now saves and restores the selected window
of every frame.  This way, it restores everything that can be changed
by calling `select-window'.

** `easy-menu-define' now allows you to use nil for the symbol name
if you don't need to give the menu a name.  If you install the menu
into other keymaps right away (MAPS is non-nil), it usually doesn't
need to have a name.

** Byte compiler changes:

*** `(featurep 'xemacs)' is treated by the compiler as nil.  This
helps to avoid noisy compiler warnings in code meant to run under both
Emacs and XEmacs and may sometimes make the result significantly more
efficient.  Since byte code from recent versions of XEmacs won't
generally run in Emacs and vice versa, this optimization doesn't lose
you anything.

*** You can avoid warnings for possibly-undefined symbols with a
simple convention that the compiler understands.  (This is mostly
useful in code meant to be portable to different Emacs versions.)
Write forms like the following, or code that macroexpands into such
forms:

second case, using `foo' as a variable won't produce a warning if it's
unbound.  The test must be in exactly one of the above forms (after
macro expansion), but such tests may be nested.  Note that `when' and
`unless' expand to `if', but `cond' doesn't.

** New translation table `translation-table-for-input'.

+++
** `load-history' can now have elements of the form (t . FUNNAME),
which means FUNNAME was previously defined as an autoload (before the
current file redefined it).

** New Lisp library testcover.el works with edebug to help you determine
whether you've tested all your Lisp code.  Function testcover-start
instruments all functions in a given file.  Then test your code.  Function
testcover-mark-all adds overlay "splotches" to the Lisp file's buffer to
show where coverage is lacking.  Command testcover-next-mark (bind it to

+++
** New function unsafep returns nil if the given Lisp form can't possibly
do anything dangerous; otherwise it returns a reason why the form might be
unsafe (calls dangerous function, alters global variable, etc).

** When you are printing using print-continuous-numbering,
if no objects have had to be recorded in print-number-table,
all elements of print-number-table are nil.

** When using non-toolkit scroll bars with the default width,
the scroll-bar-width frame parameter value is nil.

** The new function copy-abbrev-table returns a new abbrev table that
is a copy of a given abbrev table.

+++
** The option --script FILE runs Emacs in batch mode and loads FILE.
It is useful for writing Emacs Lisp shell script files, because they
can start with this line:

   #!/usr/bin/emacs --script

** A function's docstring can now hold the function's usage info on
its last line.  It should match the regexp "\n\n(fn.*)\\'".

** New CCL functions `lookup-character' and `lookup-integer' access
hash tables defined by the Lisp function `define-translation-hash-table'.

** The new function `minibufferp' returns non-nil if its optional buffer
argument is a minibuffer.  If the argument is omitted it defaults to
the current buffer.

** There is a new Warnings facility; see the functions `warn'
and `display-warning'.

** The functions all-completions and try-completion now accept lists
of strings as well as hash-tables additionally to alists, obarrays
and functions.  Furthermore, the function `test-completion' is now
exported to Lisp.

** When pure storage overflows while dumping, Emacs now prints how
much pure storage it will approximately need.

** The new variable `auto-coding-functions' lets you specify functions
to examine a file being visited and deduce the proper coding system
for it.  (If the coding system is detected incorrectly for a specific
file, you can put a `coding:' tags to override it.)

** The new function `merge-coding-systems' fills in unspecified aspects
of one coding system from another coding system.

** The variable `safe-local-eval-forms' specifies a list of forms that
are ok to evaluate when they appear in an `eval' local variables

51982:f3d2ca716f2c

`lazy-completion-table' must be used to initialize the value of VAR.

+++
** `minor-mode-list' now holds a list of minor mode commands.

+++
** The new function `modify-all-frames-parameters' modifies parameters
for all (existing and future) frames.

+++
** `sit-for' can now be called with args (SECONDS &optional NODISP).

** New standard font-lock face `font-lock-preprocessor-face'.

+++
** The macro `with-syntax-table' does not copy the table any more.

+++
** The variable `face-font-rescale-alist' specifies how much larger
(or smaller) font we should use.  For instance, if the value is
'((SOME-FONTNAME-PATTERN . 1.3)) and a face requests a font of 10
point, we actually use a font of 13 point if the font matches
SOME-FONTNAME-PATTERN.

+++
** The function `number-sequence' returns a list of equally-separated
numbers.  For instance, (number-sequence 4 9) returns (4 5 6 7 8 9).
By default, the separation is 1, but you can specify a different separation
as the third argument.  (number-sequence 1.5 6 2) returns (1.5 3.5 5.5).

+++
** `file-chase-links' now takes an optional second argument LIMIT which
specifies the maximum number of links to chase through.  If after that
many iterations the file name obtained is still a symbolic link,
`file-chase-links' returns it anyway.

---
** `set-fontset-font', `fontset-info', `fontset-font' now operate on
the default fontset if the argument NAME is nil..

+++
** The escape sequence \s is now interpreted as a SPACE character,
unless it is followed by a `-' in a character constant (e.g. ?\s-A),
in which case it is still interpreted as the super modifier.
In strings, \s is always interpreted as a space.

+++
** New function `set-process-filter-multibyte' sets the multibyteness
of a string given to a process's filter.

+++
** New function `process-filter-multibyte-p' returns t if
a string given to a process's filter is multibyte.

+++
** A filter function of a process is called with a multibyte string if
the filter's multibyteness is t.  That multibyteness is decided by the
value of `default-enable-multibyte-characters' when the process is
created and can be changed later by `set-process-filter-multibyte'.

+++
** If a process's coding system is raw-text or no-conversion and its
buffer is multibyte, the output of the process is at first converted
to multibyte by `string-to-multibyte' then inserted in the buffer.
Previously, it was converted to multibyte by `string-as-multibyte',
which was not compatible with the behaviour of file reading.

+++
** New function `string-to-multibyte' converts a unibyte string to a
multibyte string with the same individual character codes.

+++
** New variables `gc-elapsed' and `gcs-done' provide extra information
on garbage collection.

+++
** New function `decode-coding-inserted-region' decodes a region as if
it is read from a file without decoding.

+++
** New function `locale-info' accesses locale information.

+++
** `save-selected-window' now saves and restores the selected window
of every frame.  This way, it restores everything that can be changed
by calling `select-window'.

---
** `easy-menu-define' now allows you to use nil for the symbol name
if you don't need to give the menu a name.  If you install the menu
into other keymaps right away (MAPS is non-nil), it usually doesn't
need to have a name.

** Byte compiler changes:

---
*** `(featurep 'xemacs)' is treated by the compiler as nil.  This
helps to avoid noisy compiler warnings in code meant to run under both
Emacs and XEmacs and may sometimes make the result significantly more
efficient.  Since byte code from recent versions of XEmacs won't
generally run in Emacs and vice versa, this optimization doesn't lose
you anything.

+++
*** You can avoid warnings for possibly-undefined symbols with a
simple convention that the compiler understands.  (This is mostly
useful in code meant to be portable to different Emacs versions.)
Write forms like the following, or code that macroexpands into such
forms:

second case, using `foo' as a variable won't produce a warning if it's
unbound.  The test must be in exactly one of the above forms (after
macro expansion), but such tests may be nested.  Note that `when' and
`unless' expand to `if', but `cond' doesn't.

+++
*** The new macro `with-no-warnings' suppresses all compiler warnings
inside its body.  In terms of execution, it is equivalent to `progn'.

+++
** The new translation table `translation-table-for-input'
is used for customizing self-insertion.  The character to
be inserted is translated through it.

+++
** `load-history' can now have elements of the form (t . FUNNAME),
which means FUNNAME was previously defined as an autoload (before the
current file redefined it).

+++
** New Lisp library testcover.el works with edebug to help you determine
whether you've tested all your Lisp code.  Function testcover-start
instruments all functions in a given file.  Then test your code.  Function
testcover-mark-all adds overlay "splotches" to the Lisp file's buffer to
show where coverage is lacking.  Command testcover-next-mark (bind it to

+++
** New function unsafep returns nil if the given Lisp form can't possibly
do anything dangerous; otherwise it returns a reason why the form might be
unsafe (calls dangerous function, alters global variable, etc).

+++
** The new variable `print-continuous-numbering', when non-nil, says
that successive calls to print functions should use the same
numberings for circular structure references.  This is only relevant
when `print-circle' is non-nil.

When you bind `print-continuous-numbering' to t, you should
also bind `print-number-table' to nil.

+++
** When using non-toolkit scroll bars with the default width,
the scroll-bar-width frame parameter value is nil.

+++
** The new function copy-abbrev-table returns a new abbrev table that
is a copy of a given abbrev table.

+++
** The option --script FILE runs Emacs in batch mode and loads FILE.
It is useful for writing Emacs Lisp shell script files, because they
can start with this line:

   #!/usr/bin/emacs --script

+++
** A function's docstring can now hold the function's usage info on
its last line.  It should match the regexp "\n\n(fn.*)\\'".

---
** New CCL functions `lookup-character' and `lookup-integer' access
hash tables defined by the Lisp function `define-translation-hash-table'.

+++
** The new function `minibufferp' returns non-nil if its optional buffer
argument is a minibuffer.  If the argument is omitted it defaults to
the current buffer.

** There is a new Warnings facility; see the functions `warn'
and `display-warning'.

+++
** The functions all-completions and try-completion now accept lists
of strings as well as hash-tables additionally to alists, obarrays
and functions.  Furthermore, the function `test-completion' is now
exported to Lisp.

---
** When pure storage overflows while dumping, Emacs now prints how
much pure storage it will approximately need.

+++
** The new variable `auto-coding-functions' lets you specify functions
to examine a file being visited and deduce the proper coding system
for it.  (If the coding system is detected incorrectly for a specific
file, you can put a `coding:' tags to override it.)

---
** The new function `merge-coding-systems' fills in unspecified aspects
of one coding system from another coding system.

** The variable `safe-local-eval-forms' specifies a list of forms that
are ok to evaluate when they appear in an `eval' local variables